Author
Topic: Pizza Stone on Broil? (Read 1955 times)

So I have used the pizza stone usually in the center or the bottom of the oven. But even at 550F, the bottom of the crust never gets beyond golden. So I was wondering would it be ok to put my pizza stone on the top rack and let it super heat under the broiler for 30 minutes? Will that thing explode?

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scott123

Broiler pre-heats only 'super heat' the top of the stone. Pizza bakes with the heat in the entire stone. I've seen temperature readings done, and, generally speaking, as the top of the stone gets hotter the temperature of the bottom of the stone drops.

You can pre-heat the stone with the bake function and then, before baking, try to pump a bit more heat into the stone with the broiler, but it's not going to give you dramatically faster browning.

If you want a darker undercrust in a 550 degree oven, you'll need a more conductive hearth. 1/2" steel works well in this regard, and 1/2" aluminum is showing promise as well.

What style of pizza are you trying to make? What kind of flour are using?

Thanks for your response, I didnt think about the bottom of the stone possibly losing heat. I guess I was thinking if I heated it up for 1 hour on bake, then moved it close to the broiler and set that to broil for 30 minutes it would super heat through. Electric oven but never had a broiler on that long. The stone has been through an oven cleaning cycle, so I guess it can take the heat, but under a broiler?

I am using King Aurthur Bread Flour. The kind of pizza I am trying to make is sort of a cross between a New York style with a crispy center and a Neopolitin with a big crown. (I know, I will never get a true Neo with a home oven but anything close would be happy)

I have used the broil function just as you described and it works fine. It does get the stone hotter and produces a better pie. Sometimes while the pie is baking I switch to the broil function if the bottom is cooking too fast relative to the top.

I am intrigued by this method lately. I suspected the broiler was hotter than max oven temp because when I switch back to bake mode the preheat alarm instantly goes off.

Scott123, your saying a crust will brown faster on a 1/2" steel plate @ 550 vs. a stone that's been broiled well past 550? It seems bizarre that a stone would be able to reflect enough heat that the bottom would be less than 550.

I have used the broil function just as you described and it works fine. It does get the stone hotter and produces a better pie. Sometimes while the pie is baking I switch to the broil function if the bottom is cooking too fast relative to the top.

It's not just how hot the surface of the stone gets. It's how efficiently it transfers the heat, and steel is way more conductive than cordierite (I'm sure Scott will chime in with the multiples here). I can say from my experience that steel is orders of magnitude more efficient, and that I managed to char (OK burn) more than a few bottoms that way on my steel, but never on my cordierite. Also by superheating the cordierite under the broiler, you're not getting the same "heat soak" through the stone... just the surface.

Barry

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